England has managed to create just 20 miles of coastal path in four years
compared with Wales's 870 miles

We do, famously, like to be beside the seaside – and when we are there, it appears, we particularly like to walk along the coast. Three quarters of us go down to the sea at least once a year and two thirds of us take a walk there. And yet we have much less right to do so than the peoples of countries whose shores form a less far important part of their national psyche.

Danes and Swedes have a full right of access to their coasts. In Portugal, France and the Netherlands, the beaches and foreshore are owned by the public. But in England no such legal right exists for two thirds of the coastline, nor for the vast majority of beaches.

Six years ago the last government promised to put this right. In a populist move, David Miliband – then environment secretary and, it was assumed, on track to lead his party – pledged to set aside a corridor of land around the coast, complete with one of the world’s longest public footpaths, where the public could roam freely. In 2009 this became law: the plan was to cover the country’s entire 2,800-mile coastline in a decade.

Four long years later, a bare 20 miles has been completed – a stretch near Weymouth fast-tracked to be ready in time for the sailing events during the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Yet, during the same period, Wales has completed an 870-mile path right along its own coast.

In fairness, Owen Paterson, the Environment Secretary, approved plans for two more stretches – 22 miles in Cumbria and 34 miles in the North East – just a couple of weeks ago, and is to receive proposals for another five chunks over the next months. But the pace would shame a snail. Instead of finishing the job, Natural England – the official countryside body in charge of the operation – expects to have done only 40 per cent of it by 2019.

Even that looks pretty optimistic. Mr Paterson’s departmental budget is being heavily cut and it has yet to allocate future funds to the scheme. The Ramblers Association fears it may be abandoned altogether, while shadow minister Barry Gardiner last week asked the Environment Secretary to make “a clear commitment” to its completion.

He rightly pointed out that the path should bring big economic as well as environmental gains to what are often remote, sometimes badly deprived, areas. The existing South West Coastal Path, from Minehead to Poole, generates some £300 million a year – supporting more than 7,500 jobs – while every £1 spent on the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path has brought in £57 in tourist spending. At a cost of just £1 a metre, the national path would seem a good investment.

So why is it faltering so badly? Environmentalists blame landowners, and it is true that they have form – traditionally, if predictably, opposing increased public access. During passage of the last government’s legislation on a right to roam over mountain, moorland, heath and downland, peers described it as “an attack on property and rights of ownership” and warned it would increase “drug parties”, “devil worship” and “supermarket trolleys” in the country’s wild places.

None of these horrors seems to have materialised, but the landowners’ Country Land and Business Association still condemned Mr Miliband’s announcement as “ideological” and “unnecessary” and continues to call creating the path “a waste of money”. It says that 84 per cent of the coast is already open, if access voluntarily provided by its members is added to the legal requirements, and insists that it would be far better to work with landowners to improve and extend what already exists, instead of confronting them, threatening compulsory purchase, and – at times – duplicating access.

My first reaction echoed Mandy Rice Davies: “They would say that, wouldn’t they?” But the more I looked into it, the more I felt they had a point. The proof comes from Wales, where another Labour politician – Jane Davidson, then environment minister – set out to create its path at the same time as Mr Miliband’s announcement, using just such an approach. Unlike in England, she also relied on existing legislation – keeping compulsion as a key but virtually unused back-up – and paid landowners compensation. The contrast in achievement speaks volumes.

Westminster environment minister Richard Benyon has likened the English approach to using “a sledgehammer to miss a nut”. You can see what he means. But there was another essential element to the Welsh success – the strong commitment and involvement of the minister herself, who made a point of personally meeting objecting landowners. If Mr Benyon is disillusioned with the sledgehammer, he should take his own nutcracker in hand and apply it with equivalent vigour. And as a big landowner himself, he should know just where to squeeze.

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Meet the real Mighty Mouse – a new shrew with strength

You’ve heard of armoured bears – at least you will have done if you are a Philip Pullman fan. But what about armoured shrews? Such a thing has just been discovered bang on the Equator in Africa.

This real-life Mighty Mouse has backbone – lots of it – with eight vertebrae (instead of the five usually found in mammals) at its base, which interlock, making its spine four to five times stronger. Back in 1917, scientists tested the strength of a related species by the simple method of standing on its back, for several minutes, only to find the shrew walked away unharmed.

No one, thankfully, has tried that on the new discovery, made by scientists near the village of Baleko in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They’ve named it Thor’s hero shrew (Scutisorex thori) after a fellow researcher, Thorvald Holmes of the Humboldt State University, California, adding that their choice also “invokes” the Norse god of strength.

They suggest – reporting the discovery in the journal Biology Letters last week – that the armoured spine may help the 1.7oz creatures lift logs to get at bugs. In its cartoon equivalent’s catchphrase – what a mouse!

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Backing for bulk solar power

Here’s a turn-up for the books. Prof Sir David King, the former government chief scientist and a forceful proponent of nuclear power, yesterday backed solar energy as offering “the clearest prospect of success” in combating climate change.

In an article co-written with Lord (Richard) Layard, the former founder-director of the LSE Centre for Economic Performance, he calls for an international drive to “enable bulk electricity to be produced more cheaply by solar energy than by any fossil fuel”.

The two big shots focus on a key point – that it is the market, rather than regulation or the glacial international negotiations, that is most likely to bring about a clean energy revolution. In a sense it is beginning to happen: a recent report by Deutsche Bank found that the sun is now producing electricity at the same cost as the grid in India and Italy. But there is a long way to go before anything like this happens in less-sunny Britain.

They call for a research blitz to achieve their goal by 2025, which just happens to be about the time that shale gas is expected to come fully on-stream in Britain.